[Help-smalltalk] distributing smalltalk code with C bindings

[Robin Redeker]

Hi,

i wondered how to best distribute gnu smalltalk code i've written
to other systems (i386 and amd64 architectures for example),
where a recent gst is installed.

I currently have a set of files where i have a file that
loads all required packages and files in the other source files,
is this the normal way to go? Or should i rather put all the source
in a image and distribute that?
Are the images gst writes platform-portable/binary compatible?
eg. when writing a image on my amd64, will it work fine on my
32bit platforms?

And next: What if i want to interact with C libraries, where i wrote
some C glue code for? How to distribute those glue code to the other
systems and compile it there? Should the glue-code be packaged in it's
own manner with a Makefile containing the neccessary build options
(and if this is the case, where do i get the right build options from?)
or is there a way gnu smalltalk will handle that for me (build my C
source files into a library that can simply be used by gst)?

I also wonder if there is a way to install or provide 'additional' packages
to a gnu smalltalk installation. For example: smalltalk code (maybe
with C glue code) packed up in a tar ball together with a .xml
defining the dependencies, and a install script/makefile will copy (and
build) these to a (eg. system wide) location where gnu smalltalk can
simply find it.

I'm sorry for so many questions, but this bugged me for some days now
and i only saw this big packages.xml in the source tree and wondered
whether this is the only place to add packages. And i was unable to find
documentation about it yet.

Having the ability to extend a gnu smalltalk installation by copying a
tar ball and running 'make install' would ease software distribution
a lot. Like it does for Perl, which strenght is the large codebase at
CPAN, where additional modules are easily installable in a blink of an
eye (or mostly running 'cpan' and typing 'install <module name>').

Robin